I had never planted my face so fast into a carpet in my life. This was what my brother Greg referred to as a "double jackpot."

"Over my jeans?" I asked Stacy, with my hands underneath me and my head squished to one side.

"Yes," she told me. "You don't want to actually touch your own vagina."

No fucking kidding. That was out of the question. I had enough trouble even looking at my own vagina every morning when I pulled on my Mary Lou Retton underwear.

I had finally discovered what most English-speaking people refer to as the "vagina" but what my family referred to as the "coslopus" (kuh-SLOP-us). I wasn't prepared for what kind of ride this little magic muffin was going to take me on, but I reminded myself that we never choose who we fall in love with, and I had no choice when my little hot pocket in a pita took over my life for the good part of the third and fourth grades.

My initial feeling when looking down at my private area was one of disgust. From my earlier self-examinations, the only thing I could deduce was that my private area was similar to a pincushion in structure, but less radiant. You can imagine my feelings of conflict when I watched one of my brother's porn tapes and found out that in a few more years pubic hair would be joining the party. This was obviously horrific news, but after seeing a very special episode of The Jenny Jones Show about a pair of Siamese twins separated at age thirty-four, I had made it a point that I would always look for the positive in any situation. Even if that situation involved me having all of my sexual encounters up to the age of thirty with my sister connected to me. For instance, on the upside, I would be able to hide my coslopus's contents under the mound of pubic hair that was right around the corner. Were pubes better than just the pincushion by itself? This topic alone plagued me for a fortnight. Pubic hair or pincushion by itself? It basically came down to six of one, half a dozen of another. I learned an important lesson during my third-grade year: Avoid all direct contact with any part of your body you can hide something in, and stay away from Siamese people-and Siamese cats, for that matter.